


n0t ur br0

by Cheloya



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Multi, NaNoWriMo 2019, Post-Atlas At Last, Post-Borderlands 3 (Video Game), They/Them Pronouns for Zer0 (Borderlands), implied future Rhys/Zer0/Lorelei (Borderlands)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 16:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21279755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Zer0 has a bone to pick with Rhys.
Relationships: Rhys/Zer0 (Borderlands)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 132





	n0t ur br0

**Author's Note:**

> There's not enough of this pairing so here I go again I guess.

The sound of steel on steel was the sweetest damn thing that Rhys had ever heard. Even Katagawa’s rage-filled one-liner couldn’t compare.

Sparks winked out around the twinned katana, and Zer0 — the real Zer0 — was there at Rhys’s side, reaching one hand down to help Rhys to his feet. A nauseating lurch as they travelled while Rhys was still trying to get his legs to work.

Zer0 held him up as Rhys swallowed back barf, one hand holding Rhys’s own, and one under Rhys’s armpit in a weird, pathetic parody of a waltz. For a second, Rhys just hung there, limp with relief, face to Zer0’s collarbone.

Then he realised that he was soaked through with fear sweat, and that Zer0 was still patiently holding him upright, with a hand under Rhys’s drenched armpit.

Rhys had never prayed so hard for deodorant in his life.

He struggled to firm up his legs, find his balance. Zer0’s hand moved to Rhys’s waist, just for a second, and then disappeared. The face-plate flashed up a question mark, and Zer0 tilted their head to where Rhys was… still holding tightly to their hand.

"Uh, sorry--" He let go, or tried to. It took a little more effort than he was expecting; his muscles had locked on so tightly to his salvation in assassin’s clothing that his fingers were almost bloodless. He shook out his hand sheepishly as Zer0 took theirs back and flexed the fingers thoughtfully.

"I kept you waiting. Thoroughly baited the trap." The face plate changed to a sad face. "Sorry to scare you."

"I have literally never been so happy to be right," Rhys confessed, nerves and adrenaline filling his voice with laughter and maybe too much honesty. "Forget Katagawa, that last second-- even if he hadn’t had a sword, I think I might’ve died of a broken heart if you hadn’t shown up. Uh, bro," he added, belatedly, as though that could possibly back the statement off from where it had been heading.

Zer0’s voice came slowly. "Heard a transmission. He wanted to crush you, here." Four fingers, splayed over Rhys’s heart. "Not just Atlas, Rhys."

"Hah. Yeah. Crazy bastard." Rhys swallowed, hard. He’d always done his level best to keep just how much Zer0 meant to him under his moustache, but it turned out Katagawa knew how to do his research. Or knew how to pay people for it, anyway. "Wonder where he got an idea like that."

An ellipsis glowed for a moment on Zer0’s face plate. Then the door behind Rhys slid open and the glare of light off the holo-screen obscured anything else that Zer0 might have emoted in response. The dim room filled with the scents of blood and gunpowder, and the heavy tromp of Vault Hunter boots.

Zer0 spoke first. "Well done, Vault Hunter. Thank you for saving my bro."

There was no pause to emphasise the point, but Rhys felt the word like a rock in his stomach all the same.

* * *

Sooner or later, in the aftermath of certain apocalypse, a bandit clinked cups with everyone. Today, it was a paper coffee cup, and Vaughn had clinked it with Zer0, who didn’t seem interested in drinking it so much as holding it near where a mouth would be and letting the steam condense against their visor. The badass barista, Lorelei, had made a comment about wasting good coffee, but she’d gentled the comment with a wink.

"How’s my best bro-bro bro’s bro, bro?"

The question mark that popped up on the visor was slightly fuzzy at the edges, but the bewilderment was clear.

"A parsing error. That was too many bros, bro."

Vaughn laughed. "No such thing as too many bros, bro."

Zer0 put down his cup. "You both name me bro. It is different. To you, it means more. Not Rhys. His means less. I think."

"Huh?" Vaughn’s brow furrowed. "I know he’s gone full corporate for this Atlas gig, but he’d never fake a bro. If anything, it’s the opposite. I mean, you’re a badass, and you’ve helped me out a bunch, so of course we’re bros, but Rhys doesn’t bro down with just anyone."

Zer0 made a face. Could have been confusion, or doubt. Vaughn had been an accountant, dammit, emoticons weren’t his bag.

"What makes you think it means less from him?" Lorelei asked, startling Vaughn, but apparently not bothering the Vault Hunter. Zer0 made the face again, and she laughed, pleasantly scratchy. "Is this what you’ve been moping about?"

"I am not moping." This, Vaughn recognised as frustration. "Family can be good, but bro makes me feel … bad."

Something clicked. Vaughn shot the barista a look over his coffee. Her lips tugged to one side, amused even as she appeared to be sympathetic, but she shook her head slightly and backed off to the other end of the counter.

Vaughn took a swing of his triple-shot vanilla-caramel macchiato, and braced himself for one hell of a conversation.

"Maybe you’re just not looking for a bro, bro."

This time, the question marks just kept coming.

* * *

"Zer0! Buddy! What, uh, to what do I owe the, uh--"

Rhys knocked a pen cup flying as he attempted to shove his constantly buzzing echo into his desk drawer. Vaughn had been blowing the device up with frankly incomprehensible gloating and self-congratulations for the past twenty-five minutes, and given that the last conversation they’d had had been related to some cultist he wanted to bone, Rhys was really not sure he wanted any details.

"--pleasure?"

Zer0 stopped in front of his desk. There was a long pause. Rhys stared at the blank visor, blinking away warnings from his echo-eye about the dangerous nature of the Vault Hunter in front of him, and was he sure he did not want to scan. Zer0 shifted, and Rhys swallowed hard as an angry face appeared.

"We are not buddies. Try another, worth my time. Do not go with 'bro'."

Rhys blinked rapidly, trying to understand where this was coming from. "I… I can just… use your name a-and stop calling you things if that’s what you--"

Zer0 began a slow circuit of Rhys’s desk, hands flexing at their sides, face plate eerily blank. Rhys changed tack.

"Uh, or we could go with… pal? M-main man? Trusted associate?" He gulped as Zer0 circled behind him, pulse hammering in his throat as he leaned back a little to keep them in view. "What, uh, what do you want me to call you?"

Zer0’s Decepti0n flickered out. Rhys yelped as his chair lurched suddenly forward, bringing him nose to blank visor with the real Vault Hunter, sitting cross-legged on his desk.

"I have said before: do what you want to do, Rhys." Still nothing from the mask, no clues to go by, except that Zer0 was asking the question. "Call me what you want."

"Wh-what I want," Rhys repeated, slightly hysterical.

Zer0 didn’t move.

Inside the desk, Rhys’s echo buzzed insistently.

Rhys put two and two together. Something in his chest clenched.

"…he told you."

Zer0 didn’t move. Rhys couldn’t look at him.

"Look, I… it was just a crush at first, you were-- you are so super cool! And then when we started working together I was so thrilled but I thought, well, i-it’s not, a CEO shouldn’t-- ah, mm, ohmygod."

Zer0’s hand, gloved in cool leather, touched his cheek. One thumb grazed the corner of his mouth, dragging moustache hairs into disarray, and then smoothing them. Rhys’s eyes fluttered closed against his will, snapped open again to stare with laser focus, hoping against hope.

"You are CEO," said Zer0. "I can kill you with one hand. Things will even out."

"I want to call you partner," Rhys blurted out. "Lover. Or, uh, not if you don’t want, I just. Mine." He took a deep, shivering breath as Zer0’s hand withdrew slightly. "I want you to be… mine."

Zer0’s face mask flickered through half a dozen emotes in rapid succession, starting with an exclamation mark and finally landing on an open-mouthed grin.

"Acceptable terms. From here on, we are not bros."

Rhys exhaled a laugh, fogging Zer0’s faceplate, and rested his forehead against the humming plexiglass. "Not bros. Got it."

Zer0’s voice modulator spat and crackled, their voice gravelly. "And you are also… mine. Hmm." An annoyed pause. Both of Zer0’s hands framed Rhys’s face, thumbs stroking gently along his cheekbones, and the face plate glared red with an ascii heart. "…worth it."

In the desk, Rhys’s echo vibrated insistently. A blush crawled slowly across Rhys’s face.

"I… would you excuse me for just one second?"

"No. But go ahead." Zer0 returned his long hands to his lap. The heart didn’t so much as flicker. "I am quite patient, partner."

Rhys swallowed, thumbs moving hastily over the echo keypad without so much as looking down. Vaughn would get the idea. Probably. He couldn’t say he cared much, because 99.6% of his brain was pre-rolling lurid clips of what else Zer0 might be waiting for. He hit send and tossed the entire thing over his shoulder, hands already reaching for Zer0’s.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

Zer0 didn’t so much answer as respond.

* * *

Vaughn had gone from texting excitedly to spinning on his chair, eyes to the ceiling, thumbs working on yet another message, when Rhys finally responded to his gleeful and exceptionally subtle one-man denial-of-service attack.

"bestworst bro a bro cld hv dont call me kmgggjsdahfj," Rhys had sent.

Vaughn whooped and tried to smash his cup in celebration.

Paper cup and plastic lid separated, and achieved an impressive splash radius with their contents.

Lorelei handed him a mop.

As he cleaned, her eyes skimmed over the texts.

"So we’ll have a pair of string beans from now on," she said. "Sweet. I can get behind tall, dark and goofy."

"Hope you don’t mind," Vaughn said. "Twice as many wastes of coffee."

"Nah," Lorelei said, sipping her own fresh pour. "As long as they buy it, they can do what they like with it. Drink it hot and sweet, let it go cold. Besides," and she grinned, broad and lascivious. "Maybe they can learn to share."


End file.
